Web of Love
by snheetah
Summary: While walking to the office, Mr. Ratburn bumps into a woman. They have other encounters outside of school but they share feelings for one another. However, one thing that Mr. Ratburn does not know is that this woman is a mother to one of the students that goes to Lakewood Elementary. Arthur and his friends find out about Mr. Ratburn's love interest and they decide to investigate.
1. Chapter 1

**I don't own Arthur**

**Yo everybody! So this is my first 'Arthur' fanfiction. I have always adored this show and just got this idea involving my favorite characters from the show. So I hope you guys like it :)**

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><p>It was a warm Thursday afternoon in Elwood City. The students were out in recess, playing and laughing with one another. Arthur Read, an aardvark that wore a yellow shirt and blue jeans, was in a heated game of playing freeze tag with his friends. Him and his classmates had just taken a math pop quiz and he was trying to get his mind off of it.<p>

"Freeze!" a voice yelled as a hand was placed on his shoulder.

Arthur froze in place and watched Muffy Crosswire run past him. "Wow," Arthur breathed, "she is really fast," he commented as he saw Muffy charging over at Brain and freezing him in place.

"Yeah," Buster agreed who was frozen next to him, "hey, what did you get for number four?"

Arthur cringed when Buster asked him that question. He had finally forgotten about the pop quiz but thanks to Buster, every single question and answer he got came back to him. "One half, I think," he told his friend. At least he hoped it was the right answer to the question.

"Awwh," Buster groaned in disappointment, "I got zero for an answer."

"Buster," Arthur told him, "one minus one half does not equal zero."

"Ohhh," Buster moaned again, "why does math have to be so hard?"

"I studied so hard yesterday. I was doing fractions practically all night yesterday. I even missed the new episode of Bionic Bunny," Arthur told his best friend.

Buster looked at him with a wide smile. "It was really cool," he said and began to tell Arthur about what had happened in the episode. "And I thought it was totally cool that Bionic Bunny took the alien spaceship and flung it back into space. Man, I really loved that episode."

_And I was stuck doing nothing but fractions _Arthur bitterly thought. He wished he had the chance to see the episode but he didn't know when it was going to be on rerun. Suddenly, one of his other friends, Francine Frensky angrily walked up to them and touched their arms to unfreeze them. "What gives?" Arthur asked her.

Francine let out a sigh. "Muffy. She said she can't run anymore because she's too exhausted."

Buster and Arthur craned their necks and noticed Muffy who was sitting on the bench with the back of her hand on her forehead and fanning herself with her other hand. "So is the game over?" Buster asked.

"Looks like it," Francine told him, "we can play something else. Something that doesn't involve running according to Muffy's standards."

The three students walked over to the group that was gathered over to the bench where Muffy sat. They passed by a window where their third grade class stood. "Wait a minute," Francine said as she flung her hand in front of her friends to stop them from walking, "Mr. Ratburn is still in there?" She crouched to the ground and walked into the bushes where she craned her neck to look into the classroom.

"Francine," Arthur whispered, "what are you doing?"

"Shh," Francine shushed them, "I saw him pick up my pop quiz. I wanna see how I did." She turned her head back and looked at her third grade teacher grading her paper. Her eyes widened when Mr. Ratburn clicked his red pen and marked something on her paper. _I have one wrong _she groaned. She turned her head to her friends. "Well guys, I know I got one answer wrong."

"That's not so bad," Buster shrugged, "it's a lot better than the marks I might have gotten."

"Let's just continue the game," Arthur said and they walked back to their friends.

In the classroom, a corrected sheet of paper lifted from the desk and almost flew out the window. Mr. Ratburn stretched his arm and grabbed it just in time before it left. He was surprised to see how well the majority of the students had done on the pop quiz. Of course he was not surprised to see that Brain, one of the brightest student in his class, had gotten an A+, whilst another had gotten below a C+. "I think some more homework will do them good," he commented, "the more practice the better."

He finished correcting the last quiz and put them in a stack and placed a black stapler on top of it. Just when he thought he was finished and free to go to the teacher's lounge, he remembered that he had to send a note to his student's parents for their progress in class. He opened a drawer and pulled out a stack of mail letters and took them with him. He walked through the quiet halls of the school, which would soon be filled with the voices of the students walking into the building after the bell rang.

His hand reached the doorknob to walk into the office but the door flung open and a woman appeared and bumped into him. "Oh," she jumped in surprise and a manila folder fell out of her hands and its contents spilled onto the floor. At the same time, the stack of mail that was in Mr. Ratburn's hands fluttered to the floor as well. "Oh goodness," the woman said, "I am so sorry."

"That's quite alright," Mr. Ratburn said and both adults crouched to the ground and gathered the papers on the floor.

"Oh I think this belongs to you," the woman said as she handed four piece of mail letters to him.

"Thank you," he thanked her, "and I believe these belong to you," he looked up and handed her four pieces of paper and she smiled at his gesture. The woman that he had bumped to had black hair, a gray complexion, she wore a yellow sweater with an orange jacket, and blue jeans. The two adults got up from the ground and tried to go their separate ways but they wound up blocking one another.

Mr. Ratburn let out a nervous laugh when the woman accidentally blocked his path. "Alright," she took a deep breath and looked at him, "how about you walk in first?"

"Ladies first," Mr. Raturn said and he stepped to the side of the door and allowed her to pass. The woman held tightly onto the manila folder against her chest and gave him a shy smile. _Handsome and has manners_ she thought _unlike my last husband_.

"Thank you..." she dragged out the word, indicating that she wanted to know his name.

"Nigel," Mr. Ratburn held out his hand.

She looked at his hand and smiled. "Susan. Pleasure to meet you Nigel."


	2. Chapter 2

**I don't own Arthur**

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><p>The school bell rang, singling the end of recess. The Lakewood elementary students grouped themselves into their one another and headed into their classroom. Arthur took a deep breath as he sat down on his desk. <em>Now is the moment of truth<em> he thought to himself. _I'm going to get that quiz back and I'm gonna faint_. He placed his hands on his head and tightly shut his eyes.

"You really need to relax," Francine told him and sat across from him at their table, "it's not going to be that bad."

"Then why don't I feel so confident?" Arthur asked as he looked up at her.

"Because you are worrying so much about it," Francine told him as she leaned forward and poked him on the forehead with her index finger. _And it's driving my insane _she added in her thoughts. She had never seen Arthur so stressed out before. Sure, she would get intimidated about having a lot of pop quizzes and homework from Ratburn but she did well on those assignments.

"Good afternoon class," Mr. Ratburn walked into the classroom with his briefcase and a stack of papers in his hand. "I took the liberty to grading your pop quizzes that you took today but I feel that some of you need more practice than others."

This is where the whole class, expect for one student, held their breaths and looked at the third grade teacher with a frightened look in their eyes. Nigel didn't like seeing his students in such a state of shock. He gave out a lot of assignments because he wanted his students to succeed. He had his experience from out of school and knew that it was tough. He was just trying to prepare his students for the future because it was going to get a lot harder. "So I prepared some homework for those who I believe need more practice. To those of you who got below an eighty, I am going to give you this homework packet," he got up from behind his desk and began to distribute the quizzes to his students.

"Aww man," Binky, a yellow bull dog, moaned when he retrieved his quiz along with the homework packet.

Brain, the smartest student in the class, peeked over to Binky's paper. "Six more points and you would have been fine," he said, "but that's all right. I can tutor you if you want." Once Brain turned his attention over to his own paper, Binky sent him a small glare.

Then, Mr. Ratburn walked over to the table where Francine, Arthur, Buster, and Fern sat. "Well," he said and looked at the group with a pleased smile. "You and another group did quite well on this quiz," he handed back the quizzes to the students.

Fern, a quite and meek girl, let out a sigh of relief when she looked at her grade. _Eighty-seven. Great!_

Francine was not surprised to see a ninety-five on her paper. "Man," she said when she looked at the one wrong answer that she had gotten, "the answer was negative three."

Buster retrieved his quiz and was surprised to look at the grade. "Woo-hoo!" he yelled as he got up from his seat and flung his arms above his head, "eighty!"

Mr. Ratburn cleared his throat at Buster, indicating for him to quiet down and take his seat. Buster took notice of the teacher's gesture and sank back into his seat. "Here you go Arthur," he said and handed Arthur the quiz.

Arthur almost jumped out of his seat when he saw the grade. One hundred. How could this have been possible? Of course he had studied through out the week but he wasn't expecting such a grade. "See," he looked up when Francine spoke, "I told you so." Normally, Arthur would have been annoyed when he would do something wrong and Francine would put him in his place. This time, he was not bothered whatsoever.

"I say we celebrate at the Sugar Bowl," Francine told the group.

"Good idea," Buster's eyes lit up when she said that. He had been craving the Sugar Bowl since the last time they went there about a week ago.

"Great, you are invited too Fern if you want to come," Francine told her and Fern gave her a small smile, "I'm gonna tell Muffy after class if she wants to come too." She turned her head and looked at Mr. Ratburn who had returned to his desk and was looking at the class.

"Now class, that homework packet that I handed out is going to be due on Friday," he informed the students and he retrieved a lot of groans. He wished that his students could see that he was only trying to help them succeed but since they didn't understand now, he hoped that they understood in the near future. "I know that tomorrow is Friday," he held his hands in the air, "but the sooner you do it the better. Now let's move on to the next lesson in history."

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><p>After two more hours of school, the bell rang and the students gathered their items and left to go home. "Can you believe this?" Francine complained when she met up with Arthur and Buster after school was finished, "he even gave us a history project to do for Monday."<p>

"Well at least you don't have to do any math homework," Binky suddenly walked over to them, "I have to do this," he held up his math homework packet, "catch up on some Wrestling that I missed, and just about everything else."

"It shouldn't be that bad Binky," Francine told him, "the history project is due on Monday and you have all weekend to do it."

"I know but I just wanted to watch Uncle Sam take on the Timber Twins again. It's supposed to be an epic fight," Binky insisted.

Francine let out a sigh. Okay fine, she didn't like studying very much either but she knew that if she didn't but her studies first, she was not going to be able to play any sports anymore. "Anyway," she changed the subject of the conversation, "we were planning on going to the Sugar Bowl, wanna come?"

"Can't," Binky shrugged, "I gotta do this homework packet remember?" he told her and walked away from the group.

"Muffy!" Francine called her best friend and the red-headed monkey walked over to her friends. "We were planning on going to the Sugar Bowl to celebrate on getting good grades on the quiz, wanna come with us?"

"Sure," Muffy agreed as she nodded her head, "I did well by the way, ninety-five," she said and held up the quiz in front of her and showed them the grade.

Out of the whole group, only Fern and Buster were the only ones who had not scored in the A range but that was fine with them. Buster was ecstatic that he didn't have to do so much homework during the week. Then again, he always took his time on finishing his assignments. Fern on the other hand wished she had gotten a one hundred but she still considered an eighty-seven a decent grade for a surprise pop quiz.

"Great then," Francine said, "let's go." She walked over to her bike and took it along with her as she walked with her friends to the Sugar Bowl.

Throughout their walk at the Sugar Bowl, the friends were discussing what the were planning on doing for their history project. The theme of the project was to write about a historical figure that they considered a hero and how they changed the world. "I'm thinking of doing mine on Martin Luther King Jr.," Fern spoke up and shared her thoughts with the group, "he was truly inspirational to others and still is."

"Oh you took my idea," Francine joked. She had been planning on doing her project on Martin Luther King Jr. but since it was taken, then she had to think of another person to do. She noticed that Fern gave her a look of surprise, as if it was her fault that she took it. "Just kidding," Francine assured her, "I'm interested to hear about your presentation." When she said that, that made Fern relax.

"I already know who I want to do my project on," Muffy told the group, "he changed the history of automobiles and it is still successful to this day."

"I'm sure Mr. Ratburn wanted a _historical _figure Muffy," Francine reminded her, "someone made _history _in the _history _books."

"Hmph," was all Muffy could say and she crossed her arms across her chest, "well without him your parents wouldn't have had such wonderful cars," she said in her defense.

The friends finally arrived to the Sugar Bowl but before they went inside they spotted Mr. Ratburn walking into Jack's Joke Shop where he worked. He had a job in the shop during the summer but he decided that it was best to have the job during the school year as well. "And there he goes," Francine said when they saw their teacher walk into the shop.

"And we should probably go in," Buster said, "I'm starving." And so, the friends walked into the Sugar Bowl.


End file.
